Bernie Sanders and the socialists are at it again, peddling their lies about how we need to give the government more power in response massive price increases of drugs such as the EpiPen. The entire argument is bunk; government regulators are the cause, not the solution.

Yet in Europe, EpiPen competes with several devices at a fraction of its U.S. list price of $608.61 per pair. Denmark’s ALK-Abello, which specializes in allergy therapies, sells the Jext pen for $34 to $67 throughout Europe, and is interested in selling it in the U.S. “Our decision will be determined by what it takes to obtain FDA approval,” says a spokesman.

The WSJ points out that it typically takes four years for generic drugs to work their way through our insane regulatory web over at the FDA. That regulatory web works to shut down competing drugs. Next the WSJ gives an example of how costly these unnecessary regulations can be for American consumers.

When Turing acquired Daraprim, it increased the price from $13.50 per dose to $750.

High prices should be a magnet for new suppliers. But first, generic manufacturers must prove to the Food and Drug Administration that their drug has the same quality, strength, purity and stability as the branded drug. That can be costly and time-consuming. The FDA has faced a growing volume of applications. More than 3,000 filed before October 2014 still await approval; the typical lag between application and approval is four years, according to the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, a trade group. Applications after that date enjoy faster treatment under a special arrangement with the industry.

Daraprim is no longer under patent, and generic versions sell in Canada and Europe for $1 to $3, notes Alex Tabarrok, an economist at George Mason University. But because those drugs aren’t approved for sale in the U.S., Turing Chief Executive Martin Shkreli knew that the approval process gave him “a window of opportunity to exploit monopoly power.”

Bernie Sanders is trying to give regulators MORE power, specifically, the power to institute price controls, instead of trying to break the unholy monopolistic alliance between big pharma and the FDA. Progressives are always smugly proclaiming that they are the ones who gave us safe food and drugs with the creation of the FDA. Now they want to give their beloved regulators more power to skew the free market.

Progressives can’t have it both ways. If they try to say that these insane regulations are necessary to make our drugs safe; then they can’t gripe about how much cheaper drugs are in Denmark. Those drugs are supposedly unsafe, remember?

The reality is that deregulation and capitalism has made drugs cheaper in Canada and Denmark NOT price controls.